If you are reading this, the Earth still exists, doomsday never happened and the Mayan prophecy, like most other prophecies, turned out to be a dud.

What is amazing about the Mayan nonsense is that it wasn’t a primitive tribe in the Amazons or Papua New Guinea that embroiled itself in the hysteria of an upcoming armageddon, but the most educated and advanced society ever, the United States.

Hopefully 2013 will bring out the better angels among Americans — men and women with insight, clearer vision, and the courage to stand up for the truth and the character to not have convenient concussions when faced with accountability.

We begin the year with just such a man. Senator John Kerry, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been nominated as the new U.S. Secretary of State.

Unlike his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, who learned about the world travelling as a first lady, Senator Kerry has a track record of knowing the hot spots of the world, long before he entered politics and public life.

Yale University, from where he graduated may have helped him understand the reach and might of the United States, but it was his military service that played a major part in his awakening to America’s limitations as well.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, who managed to avoid military service, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and by 1968 was serving on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley deployed in the Gulf of Tonkin. Later, Lt. Kerry was to see military action inside then South Vietnam as officer-in-charge of a Swift Boat for which he was awarded combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts.

Only in America would a man’s military service for his country come back to haunt him. During John Kerry’s candidacy in the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, television ads placed by a well-funded right-wing group and a book called Unfit for Command, successfully cast doubt on John Kerry’s military record, making him lose very narrowly to a man who had no military record whatsoever.

Having lost the election, John Kerry did not fade away. Rather, he worked across the aisle with former Republican Senator Richard Lugar to leave his imprint on one of the world’s most dangerous places in the world, Pakistan.

Because of the 2009 Kerry-Lugar Bill (The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009), the Pakistan Military, who have a track record of overthrowing almost every elected government in Islamabad, can no longer afford to do so.

The law authorizes the release of $1.5 billion US per year to the government of Pakistan, but with one caveat: If the Pakistan military overthrew the elected civilian government, the aid would end.

The Pakistani military fumed that the bill required the Secretary of State to provide assessments every six months on whether Pakistan’s civilian government had effective control over the armed forces, including “oversight and approval of military budgets.”

Already the Balochistan National Party in Pakistan has written to Kerry asking him to invoke the law and suspend U.S. aid as a punitive measure in response to the Christmas Day massacre by the Pakistan Military in the town of Mashkay that killed 32 civilians.

Hopefully in 2013, John Kerry will use this model and tweak it to apply it to Egypt and the Middle East at large. Imagine a Secretary John Kerry who ensures a cut-off in aid to Egypt if it fails to protect the fundamental human rights of all list citizens — Muslim, Baha’i, Christian, Jew, Gay, Atheist and Apostate.

Imagine a Secretary John Kerry who ties U.S. aid to Israel on a halt to expanding settlements in territory that is clearly earmarked for a future Palestinian State.

Imagine a Secretary John Kerry telling the Palestinians, if you do not return to the negotiating table, forget about U.S. aid.

In 2013, all of the above is possible because the concussions that John Kerry had were all in Vietnam, not over Benghazi.

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Leading up to my testimony at the House of Commons Heritage Committee last week, I had expected MPs to have some degree of interest in what a Muslim had to say about M-103 and the loaded word “Islamophobia”.